Why Jews Need Israel

And now we have the news coming out of Chile. A Jewish backpacker was charged with starting a major forest fire in the Torres del Paine national park, an incident which, as David Breakstone puts it in an article titled “The Dreyfus Revival,” quickly fanned the flames of antisemitism and anti-Zionism. According to segments of the Chilean press, the political echelon, the social networks and the public, Israel stands accused of a particularly malefic geopolitical objective, namely, of intending to colonize Patagonia and plant a second Jewish state in southern Chile! According to Breakstone’s report, spectators accosted the backpacker as a “stinking Jew,” journalist Andres Figueroa Cornejo “published a diatribe against Israel in El Ciudadano” comparing the country to Nazi Germany, and the vice president of the Christian Democratic Party, Fuad Chachin, denounced Israel for ‘killing Palestinian children.’

Conveniently forgotten are that Israel sent a crack rescue team to Japan to aid in restoration work after the 2011 tsunami and hosted Chilean miners who survived the Copiapó disaster in a “pilgrimage of thanks.” Indeed, it comes as no surprise that the state-of-the-art medical team Israel dispatched to Haiti after the great earthquake of 2010, reputedly the most effective of the international field hospitals, was venomously maligned among bloggers and journalists as an organ harvesting operation. Israel is a country that gives far more to the world than almost any other country, excelling in the fields of science, technology, medicine, agriculture, and green energy, not to mention literature, as George Gilder makes luminously clear in his The Israel Test—which does not prevent it from being considered a pariah among the nations.

Even at the best of times, antisemitism lingered as a kind of low fever. Today, however, the world has become sick again with the same virulent infection that spread through the 1930s and led to the Holocaust. Israel is resented because it provides Jews with the possibility of survival in a country with a strong military, a tested population and an open-door policy for diasporites who wish to emigrate. It is thus condemned, to cite the title of Robin Shepherd’s book on the subject, as “a state beyond the pale.” But this state is necessary as a refuge and haven even for the most anti-Zionist and post-Zionist Jews, whose secular pieties and embrace of internationalism will not save them in the event of a catastrophe.

Breakstone remarks that “the uncomfortable question as to just how much the Jewish people can ever really be at home outside of a Jewish state remains unanswered.” Perhaps at certain times and in certain places it is differentially possible, but there can be no assurance that the condition of peaceful assimilation will be permanent. Jews need Israel as much as Israel needs Jews. Like Philip K. Dick’s definition of reality, history is that which does not go away. Many Jews feel that Israel has made the world less safe for them. The truth is that the world has always been, so to speak, “less safe” for them, which explains the rise of the Zionist movement and the necessary re-establishment of the state of Israel.

In the present time, as Broder observed, antisemitism has once again become fashionable, and Jewish citizens of democratic states throughout the West are coming increasingly under attack. The existence of Israel is only a pretext for the “new antisemitism,” which has found a political substitute for other, discreditable forms of a primordial and tenacious bigotry. The old malevolence has merely added another aspect to its inventory. But it is the same old hatred.

Whether or not Jews wish to admit it, the Jewish state will always remain their fallback position, the only default guarantee they can rely on. If Israel is destroyed, all the Jew can reasonably expect from the liberal world in which he has invested his loyalty and made his contribution is a candlelight vigil. And there should be no mistake about this. In the course of time the candles of a false remorse will inevitably begin to gutter.

Wrong. America is and always will be more important to Jews than Israel. Consider this: which situation is more dangerous for world Jewry; the collapse of Israel, or an eliminationist government coming to power in the US? I thought so.

Maher

“an eliminationist government coming to power in the US? “ Eliminationist? You mean a US government using ethnic cleansing Arab style? Jews were indigenous all over the “Arab world” 2,000 years before the Arab occupation. Zero today. Eliminationist? Similar to the Arab governments employing ethnic and religious cleansing vis à vis the Chaldeans, the Copts, the Tamazight, the black people of Sudan and Mauritania?

NotaBene

Talk about a non-answer.

Maher

As a "non-answer" I'll give you the conclusion of my post : the Arabs are the worst predators this planet has ever seen.

Advocatus

Well, NotaBene, that depends which Jews you mean. For Israeli Jews, the "collapse of Israel," as you so euphemistically put it, should hold pretty dismal prospects now, should it not?

NotaBene

if Israel fails, the US will be there for the Jews…if the US is taken over by Nazi-era levels of antisemitism, forget it, game over….Israel won't be able to sustain itself even if you believe its nuclear weapons keep it safe from attack.

Cynic

” an eliminationist government coming to power in the US? ”

When sharia comes to the US, and there is a relatively high probability given the current state of affairs, elimination will start.
Take alook at what has happened to the Norwegian city of Malmo; how many Jews there now?

PAthena

Malmo is in Sweden.

SpiritOf1683

Yep. Malmo is in Sweden, but for the Jewish population there, it is starting to hardly matter if Malmo is in Sweden, Egypt or Iran.

Sage on the Stage

How pathetically ignorant you are. If you read the articles on this site, you should understand that many American Jews-perhaps a majority, don't care about Israel. You need to consider that there was a sizeable Jewish community in America, long before the 1948 beginning of modern Israel.(Jews began to come to America in 1654)
Also, Jews have been in the Diaspora–dispersed from their ancient homeland in Israel–since the 70 A.D. destruction of the 2nd Temple. Thus for American Jews, the destruction of present-day Israel would be a catastrophe(that might result in a 2nd Holocaust), but they would stil survive. But an "eliminationist government" in the US would be a more immediate threat to American Jews' survival.

Raymond in DC

Corrective: Jews were well distributed across the Roman Empire while the Temple still stood – including in what are today Libya, Egypt, Turkey and Iran, all areas much later conquered by the Arabs.

We obviously have a different sense of "survival". Consider what it must have been like long ago for those Jews who survived the fall of Jerusalem in 70 CE. Yes, Jewish life continued in the Galilee and along the coastal plain, as well as many areas of that Diaspora. But the failure of the Bar Kochba rebellion some 65 years later resulted in even greater loss of life and mass enslavement. One can only imagine the resultant trauma and despair. Were there to be a second holocaust today with the span of a single lifetime I think it would be so traumatic many would simply cease to be Jews in any real sense.

reader

Nifty false choice. If Israel goes, it's trouble for the US as well.

UCSPanther

I think I know why Japan has a problem with antisemitism: It has mainly to do with Japanese Nationalists, a group of malcontents wanting a return to Japan's violent imperialism of WWII.

In Japan, it is said to be somewhat fashionable to engage in revisionist history about WWII, especially with respect to their genocidal rampage in China.

I have also seen modern day Japanese nationalists being on friendly terms with Neo-Nazis and even hanging out on their websites.

UCSPanther

Frankly, it is quite pathetic yet hilarious to see the desperation of Jew haters. A lot of what they try amounts to no more than throwing garbage at a wall and hoping something will stick.

maria

Israel is on the first line in battle with Islamic-fashists battle. Islamists openly say "Islam will dominate". It means the end of Western civilization. It is not only jews extermination but all non-muslims extermination as well. Read Koran, Islamic "Main Kampf". It is all about you all non-muslims including anti-semits. We all depends on Israel survival. Millinons Christians in US and in the world support Israel. The first victims in history always were Jews but next were others. After Saturday is always Sunday.
I am patriot of US and I am for Israel.

Neils60

One need only look at the OWS crowd here in the USA, and its many, many supporters, especially the politicos, who evidently have succumbed to the sickness of blind Jewish hatred in order to solidify their support with the "progressives" who share their disdain for Jews. In fact, yesterday, Jay Carney, White House spokesperson, when asked about the violence and hatred in Oakland, California's version of OWS, didn't condemn any aspect of the outrageous behavior by those occupiers or occupiers anywhere.

Marty

It's not just Jews who need Israel. Western civilization and political democracy need Israel to survive and remain the only beacon of hope in an islamic infected middle east. At some point Israel will attack and hopefully destroy most if not all of the iranian nuclear program. That is when we will learn once and for all who is for indiviudal freedom and who wants to enable islam to destroy it.

Maxie

Since the time of Marx it has been a segment of Jewry advocating atheistic Collectivism, aka, Communism. Whether communism or its more obscure twin "tikkun olam" the intent is a homogenization of humanity: the end of individualism, religions, nations (including Israel). It's my belief that is what's at the core of "anti-semitism" even if it goes unrecognized by the anti-Semite himself. Groups which militantly defend against so-called anti-Semitism (ACLU, So. Poverty Law Center et al) are really anti-anti-communist agencies using charges of anti-Semitism as a shield.
Now watch people scream "anti-Semite" at me.

"… ACLU, So. Poverty Law Center et al defending Jews against anti-Semitism" – I doubt that. They may occasionally defend such "Jews" as Soros or Alinsky against critique of conservatives. Do you have more examples for ACLU?…

We all know you're a viciously insane and useless Jew hater by now who should never have reeived his Jewish-invcented vaccines and medicines, so why do you keep repeating your usual hate-filled trash?

Ghostwriter

If you want an example of Japanese anti-semitism,look no further than an anime called "Angel Cop." On the surface,it's a typical anime. A story about a group fighting terrorism in Japan. Unfortunately,it went into some pretty nasty territory. Not only was it extremely violent and anti-American,but it was also anti-Jewish. It had a storyline in which the Jews took over America and tried to turn Japan into a nuclear waste dump. When this was brought to America,the anti-semitism was wisely toned down and both the English dub and the subtitled version skipped over the anti-semitic parts.
This type of anime would greatly please Nakba1948 because he has shown time and again that he hates Jews and wants them dead. I want to tell Nakba1948 this. Jewish-Americans have been among our most patriotic citizens. They're not the ones who want America destroyed,it's those like Nakba1948 and his pals who scream "Death to America" every chance they get.

Debanjan Banerjee

Gilad Atzmon has clearly stated in his book "the wandering who ?" that the basic reason behind the problem for Jewish identity is that the Jew considers itself as a different kind of superior being than the goyim and is ready to do everything to make himself superior over goyim.

This is the reason the anti-semitism comes into picture. If the Jew can think himself similar to the Goyim , no one amongst the Goyim will consider them as "vermins" or "the children of apes and pigs".

Maher

Whose child are you Banerjeer?

http://www.resonoelusono.com/NaturalBornCitizen.htm Alexander Gofen

This is a very nice and thoughtful article.

Raymond in DC

"The re-creation of the state of Israel in its ancestral territory is broadly regarded as a colonial incursion into the Middle East …"

How curious. The Arabs burst out of the Arabian peninsula early in the 7th century and within a century had conquered much of the known world from Iberia to the Indian sub-continent. Yet they accuse the Jews, who have retaken much less than 1% of that territory as their historic patrimony of "colonial incursion"!

gus

I don`t undestand how some people like you always mistake the awareness on apartheid state in Israel and its anti human rights policies as antizionism. The world is nor always looking at you. Stop violating all the international laws and the world will stop critizising these israeli policies. Nothing to do with jews and hatred…